I like the article (but the grades for the O and D should be Swaped. I was impressed that all of these guys are looking good and getting some positive comments from Rich Rod. I believe we go 9-3 this year... i believe that Rich Rod will get the best out of these guys... some of whom were his type of player in HS but then came to M and were molded in the old ways.

My take on what to look for this year (very, very general):

we will be much faster at all positions, leaving the opposition in the big ten scratching their collective arsses

a lot of the guys that were over looked under the last regime will really start to show their skill now that they are all on a level playing field

terrance taylor being the lineman of the year now that he is svelt (sp?)

the defense will be damn good - we all know this - but I feel that they will look just as overwhelming as the 06 d

rich rod shutting up his critics... and showing the experts that M has more skill than what is being said

Mike Barwis submitting a grizzly bear at Half Time with an arm bar at the 15:05 mark, this is after a few elbows and knees to the head (he tries a guiliteen hold that fails - it is a grizzley bear after all)...

Pretty general but hey just because I am bored does not mean I do not have work to do!

I had it on the second hardest setting, I didn't improve anyone's skills and the score was still 21-3, 7 minutes per quarter...I threw 1 pick with Steven Threet, used 4 different RB's: Minor, Brown, Grady and McGuffie, 1 most of each quarter, Brown had 50+ yd run, gave up 1 sack...I sacked Brian Johnson 4 times, Stevie Brown picked him off 1 time, BJ made many mistakes and imcompletions, seemed like he was very shaken, held Utah O to only 68 yards...very successful return game, Donovan Warren returned 5 punts for over 200 yds with 1 TD, Morgan Trent returned every kickoff past the 50...defense didn't really seemed dumbed down, RBs were a little slippery but most of the D crowded to the ball and took care of that issue...very good game

After losing so many starters and back-ups, it is an obvious area of worry.

How
bad is the situation? I'll look at the bad, the good, and then
the questions. Many facts taken from Phil Steele and other
previews.

BAD

Long, Kraus, Boren, Mitchell (5 starts), Ciulla (5 starts) lost.

Number
of returning career starts for the whole offensive line is 118th in the
NCAA (16: 13 for Schilling, 2 for Ortmann, 1 for McAvoy).

Learning a new offense.

Only 8-9 scholarship players,
not counting true freshmen (of which, maybe only one or two have the
size/skill to play immediately).

Some of the projected starters
are the kind of disappearing late-career players that would be the like
of Doug Dutch acting as a starting CB or Anton Campbell starting at RB
last year.

GOOD

The 4 new starters are all 4th year juniors. They are not 260 pound true freshmen.

The
5 projected starters (Moosman-McAvoy-Zirbel-Schilling-Ortmann) were all
highly rated coming out of high school. In Phil Steele parlance,
VHTs. Let's compare their recruiting rankings, using the Phil
Steele composite, to projected starters from schools like Texas and
Ohio State. All are as OL unless noted.

Michigan: #39, #44, #20, #4, #33TE

Ohio State: #24, #25, #46, #6 (Adams, #39 [Browning] if not), #2

Texas: #35, #10, #55, #28, #23

As you can see, there is no significant difference.

6
true frosh are coming in, 4 of whom were very highly touted (4-5
star). At the very least, one would think Dann O'Neill has the
size and skill and experience (played in a similar offense) to be a
solid 2nd string and perhaps supplant another starter towards the end
of the season. An OL starting as a true frosh is quite rare, but
becoming less rare as HS programs become more sophisticated.

QUESTIONS

Are
these four new junior starters talented players who were just waiting
their turn, or talented players overlooked by the previous coaching
staff.... or, talented HS players who just don't have the skills to
become real Big 10 starters?

Will the new staff develop OL
talent better? Others have pointed out the decline in Michigan OL
quality and NFL draft picks recently, despite high quality recruiting.

Injuries...
the starters might be decent, but if a couple go down with injuries,
who takes their place? There are a bunch of MAC-quality
walk-ons/scholarship players (Huyge #275 OL in his class, Nowicki
#233), plus 282 pound redshirt frosh Molk, plus the true frosh, plus
Dorrestein on the outside. If you Molk and O'Neill have to see
playing time on the inside and outside, respectively, this would
probably be okay. But Nowicki, Huyge and Dorrestein?

How will the freshmen develop?

Does the new offense put less emphasis on high-quality
pass-blocking skills (hard for a young player or MAC-level player to
handle to handle) and more emphasis on Ninja Football trickery that an
average OL can handle?

I look forward to comments from those who know football better and those who can correct any factual errors.

If
you replaced "Joe Paterno" with "Lloyd Carr" and each corresponding PSU
person with its Michigan equivalent, it would still sound just about
right. (even the part about not throwing passes over the middle).

My opinion of why Michigan has always been successful against PSU was that it was looking at a mirror-image of itself. While Michigan typically struggled against teams that didn't employ their Pro-Style offense, Penn State's straightforward "conservative" playcalling played right into Michigan's hands. Of course, while we as Michigan fans could grumble about it from our own perspectives, it's always interesting to hear the same words being said about another team with similar deficiencies (hence, the Altoona Mirror Article linked above). Here's an excerpt of how it could have read if it were written about Lloyd Carr-era Michigan Football:

ANN ARBOR - Michigan can have all the offensive weapons in
the world, but it won't matter if Lloyd Carr insists on being
conservative.

Carr needs to do several things for the intriguing new Run, Run, Pass, Punt offense to be
most effective: